Work in Progress

The first week of working on the radio show has been successful. The audio assignments were my favorite unit so I’ve been having fun returning to it. I started the week on Monday with a zoom call with the rest of my group so we could delegate tasks and brainstorm ideas. Our idea for the show is a lifestyle podcast where people can call in and ask for advice. I suggested adding a comedic cyberpunk twist to the show to make it relate more to our course.

I was assigned to make an advertisement so I decided to make an ad for a product called SupremeSkillShare which is supposed to be a twist on the learning platform SkillShare. The product allows anyone to gain a skill by taking a vitamin. I was inspired by ‘Harrison Bergeron’ by Kurt Vonnegut which tells a story about a government who enforces equality by handicapping people with special abilities. This assignment was easy except for a self-inflicted challenge that I kept running into, you can read more about it in my blog post.

The next assignment I did was the Podcast Intro. At first, I struggled to figure out where to start on this assignment so to inspire myself, I looked at other podcast’s intros. The intro starts with someone calling into our show and then an instrumental of ‘Feminomenon’ by Chappell Roan, I also included lines from TechNoir female characters. All these elements are meant to reflect vibes of our show; the phone call is because people call into our show and ‘Feminomemon’ coupled with TechNoir female characters because our show is run by strong female characters. This assignment was more of a struggle because the ending I wanted sounded cut off as opposed to a natural ending. You can read more about my process here.

The last assignment I did was the design project, this was the easiest of the three. I combined elements of femininity and cyberpunk to curate a good bumper sticker that fit our show. Another thing I was thinking about when I was designing the sticker was “what do other bumper stickers look like?” This sticker is silly and is shows the personality of the driver, so I had to also picture what our listeners’ personalities would be. I wanted to make a bumper sticker because it acts as merch for fans and as an advertisement for the podcast. You can read more about the sticker in my blog post.

I really enjoyed working on these assignments. I loved crafting an image for the show and using it to inspire different assignments. The only thing I’m struggling with is how time consuming these assignments are. I can’t tell if I’m being a perfectionist or if these assignments just take a long time. Again, I’m having fun with the tasks so I don’t mind spending time on them but I don’t know if it’s sustainable. I’m looking forward to the show coming together so I can hear everyone’s work put together.

SupremeSkillShare

I was assigned to make a commercial for the group project. When I was deciding what to make, I knew I wanted to take a product that I hear a lot on podcasts and put a technoir twist on it. Other products I thought of were HelloFresh and Tinder. Ultimately I landed on SkillShare because I struggled to incorporate tech into the other options. To make the advertisement, a lot of planning went into the fictional product. I needed to determine the name, the function, and a tagline to make a script for the ad. Once I had finished writing the adread, I recorded the audio using my phone and edited it on Adobe Audition. I also uploaded some music to play in the beginning and end of the ad. One challenge I kept running into was I kept forgetting the name of our podcast. Our group met for Zoom to come up with ideas, and on the Zoom we established the name but I had forgotten it the next day. No problem! I checked our meeting notes and saw it was Fearless Femmes. However, the way it was spelled made me think it was pronounced “Fem-Mees.” I played it for feedback and was told it’s just “Fems.” Again, No problem! I had to go to class so I didn’t get to rerecord it until later, but by the time I did it again, I had mistaken our name for Fatal Femmes instead of Fearless Femmes, so I had to re-rerecord it. Other than that, it was an easy assignment and I like how it came out. The idea of a product that allows you to master any skill by taking a vitamin reminds me of ‘Harrison Bergeron’ by Kurt Vonnegut; a story about a government that enforces equality by giving handicaps to those with superior abilities. I loved Harrison Bergeron when I was in middle school so of course it inspired me for this project.

Radio Show Week 1

For the first half of the week, a group member and I were planning the storyline and structure of our radio show project on Discord, as we were waiting to get the whole team together. Since we wanted to keep moving forward, we decided to go ahead and plan the show. The concept centers on Eric and DK, polar opposites and unlikely best friends, who co-host a radio advice show. They tackle relationship dilemmas and current topics, and their contrasting perspectives create entertaining dynamics. We also introduced Finn, a socially awkward but successful CEO, who calls in for dating advice, sparking a discussion about the digitized dating world.

We spent the week outlining and scripting, with plans to record over the weekend or Monday, leaving the rest of the week for editing. Although we weren’t able to create bumpers or commercials yet, we focused on the scripting and promotion. Personally, I wrote a rough script and outline for the show and created a promo. We’re staying on track with our plan and will continue working on the project, aiming to have everything ready for submission next week.

Canva and Google Docs are the only tools I’ve used this week.

Radio Design Project

This week, we were tasked with creating a bumper, poster, or logo for our radio show.

I decided to create a small promotional poster using Canva. I wanted a simple design that relates to the tech-noir theme and our group’s radio show, The Opposites. To achieve the look I envisioned, I used Canva’s pixel effect to give the text and hearts a glitchy appearance.

Coming up with an idea for the poster was a bit challenging since I don’t see many radio show advertisements these days, so I didn’t have much to reference. However, I’m happy with how the design turned out!

Swipe Right on The Opposites

Weekly Summary 9

  1. Radio Show Progress:

Game show music

Noir Games Ad

Radio Show Intro

Radio Bumper

  1. Radio Show Design Project:

Bumper Sticker

  1. Audio Assignments: 

Game show music

  1. Daily Creates:

Daily Creates

What

a

week

…

Lots of things to get done and not a lot of time and there is still more to do next week. Of course, that is going to be just as time consuming, but I will do my best to work hard. The content this week was just me glaring at Audacity wondering what I was doing wrong and pressing the undo button again. If I could alter it to dark mode perhaps my eyes would hurt less. The light never hurt more after staring at a screen all day do, they bleh. I have been taught if I don’t have anything nice to say just don’t say it so I shall keep my mouth zipped and just grumble under my breath. I am just not a fan of group anything since no one is paying me. I call what I do secretary work yes; I could make and plan everything but why should I? the word group is in the name. I am a control freak with time anxiety not a great combo. Still, I have learned to treat people like they are adults and have learned to take a step back and let it happen. Some time it goes well other times it may not but as long as I can see people are trying it’s all cool.

There has been progress here and there almost everywhere, now tis time for the moon to rise and for me to follow the sun and go down for the night

Also learned how to add gifs from Giphy

Radio Show Progress

I gave myself a few tasks to pull together the project, making an ad radio bumper, intro music, and background music. In my eyes that’s not too much since it’s not like I have to get it all done in one day. If I had my way it would be an item a day but, my schedule does not allow such willfulness. These are the items I have made so far for the project.

Radio Show Intro

Noir Games Ad

Bumper Sticker

Game show music

Quite a bit of stuff honestly, I work hard for the sake of resting later! I really struggle with audio assignments overall, so I am feeling drained had more fun just using Canva it was nice. Next up is recording dialogue and adding any needed effects. Hope it comes out well. All of these have their own story and own effort, and I am sure my group mates are working just as hard.

Game show music

For the background music I wanted something techy but not focus grabbing since it’s only background music.

Of course, it’s not perfect but the point isn’t perfection.

Freesound – Crowd Clap.wav by GB01

Create a Place – Assignment Bank

Freesound – background music.mp3 by ZHRØ

Freesound – Buzzer sounds (Wrong answer / Error) by Breviceps

Freesound – 10661 bonus correct answer.wav by Robinhood76

I wanted to make the listener remember game shows they may have watched when they were younger going for the nostalgia factor. I made this using Audacity once again and sounds from Freesound. Made sure to add the sources above the sound cloud.

For this audio I was a bit stuck on how to do it since it’s not like I was going to make a mini game show. As the Audio assignment said I was trying to just create a place, and my place happened to be in a studio during a game show. I did more splitting and way too may adjustments. Learned something very unfortunate if the segment is too small it’s very hard to move and adjust! So, I had to keep cutting and pasting. Still, I managed to make it work with some good ol elbow grease.

One thing to another

For my second audio assignment of the week, I chose the Radio Show Intermission assignment, which consists of offering the listeners a break from the discussion that is going on during a show. I took a different approach to this assignment though, creating a brief intermission to transition to be able to go from discussion to another aspect like an ad or a different segment of the show. I wanted to make it quick, but also harsh, to show it’s not meant to blend flawlessly into the show, it’s meant to stick out a little to give the listeners an idea of something changing and to bring back full attention.

Radio Show Progress

My team met over zoom on Monday to discuss the layout of our radio show.

we each started by going over past assignments such as the character creation and radio show ideas. Once we talked about each character we tried to find a way to fit them all together to have a cohesive show. We ultimately came up with the idea to create a news broadcasting show. Each one of our characters are from a different area so the main goal is to report, as our characters, from these different places.

“Radio show idea: we will each be news broadcasters as our character reports about what’s going on in their current city/ state/ country” This is the prompt that we will be working off of to all coordinate our stories.

We plan to meet again early next week to make sure we are all on track with our work and will start compiling all of our audios to one radio show.

Maddie made a google drive for all of us to share our stuff in as we complete it.